Superwomen of Eva: Legacies: True Blue
by Cody MacArthur Fett
Summary: Hikari never wanted to be a hero, but after getting a set of sapient alien powered armor fused to her back she soon finds herself the apprentice of billionaire Ted Kord, an enemy of the nation of Bialya, and the savior of lands from New Zealand to Raan. All that, and middle school drama too. As if being the straight woman wasn't bad enough.
1. Issue 1

"Yeah. Beats the hell out of big shiny spaceships, laser beams, and evil laughs."

* * *

 _True Blue_ #1

Written by Cody MacArthur Fett

Edited by Cyclone, Bob Regent, and Shinzakura

German Translation by Ranma-sensei

* * *

The world was in a time of peace. After the conflagration that engulfed the planet during Second Impact and the weeks following it, humanity had been joined together in alliance under the United Nations directed by the Human Instrumentality Committee. In sharp contrast to the world before, there were no giant monster attacks, no bank robberies by criminals with laser guns, no alien invasions, no conspiracies to rule the world, no bizarre lab accidents, no robot armies, and no superheroes, at least as far as the general public was concerned.

That facade had come crashing down just a few weeks ago, and the multicultural mountain metropolis of Tokyo-3 on the east coast of Japan was the shatterpoint. A giant creature they called an Angel had advanced towards the city and killed many before being stopped by the equally giant Evangelion humanoid defense mechanism. Then a short time after that, disaster struck in the form of a crashing aircraft that would have killed thousands had it not been for the intervention of a dark-haired flying heroine called Supergirl. The Second Age of Heroes had dawned, with all the wonder and terror that came with it.

All of which was merely background noise to Horaki Hikari, Class Representative of Class 2-A of West Tokyo-3 Municipal Middle School. Literally. Another Angel was attacking the city, but her focus was on the other children in the shelter they were in. While the battle raged outside, she had to keep things calm inside.

"Hey, what are you two up to?" Hikari asked as she walked up to Tōji and Kensuke, having noticed them getting rather heated while checking in on how some of the newer students were doing.

"We weren't doing anything . . ." Tōji began reflexively before calming down and collecting himself. "Sorry, class rep. I'm just trying to find my sister, but she doesn't seem to be anywhere, so I was asking Kensuke if he'd seen her."

"I'm doing a human interest story about people's time in the shelters," Kensuke explained. "Didn't see Sakura anywhere either, though."

"Hmm, you said her name was Sakura?" Hikari asked, a hand on her chin.

"Yeah, Suzuhara Sakura, have you seen her?" Tōji answered with a bit of hope.

"No, but my sister Nozomi is in the same class as her. We could ask if she'd seen her," the class rep explained.

"Worth a shot. Come on!" Toji said as he ran off towards the younger students in the shelter.

"Wait! Toji! Let me talk to her! You don't even know what she looks like!" Hikari called as she ran after the jock, Kensuke following close behind with his hand on his camera.

"You! Are you Horaki Nozomi?" Tōji asked one of the children in the younger section of the school shelter.

" _Nein, i-ich bin Mariko..._ " the little girl replied in German and with more than a hint of fear.

"Argh! How about you?" he asked the child next to her.

"I'm a boy," he replied with a fair share of annoyance.

"Suzuhara! Stop scaring the little kids," Hikari snapped as she came up behind him before turning to the little girl and making an apologetic gesture. " _Bitte verzeih diesem Idioten, Kleine. Seine Schwester ist verschwunden und er ist krank vor Sorge,_ " she told her.

" _Oh! Ich hoffe, er findet sie bald!_ " the little girl replied with a wave as Hikari dragged Tōji to another part of the shelter.

" _Idioten_?" Tōji asked.

"You were the one scaring a small child," Hikari explained before stopping in front of another group of students and one in particular. "Nozomi?"

"What do you want, sis?" one of the black-haired students said brattily as she got up to address her.

"Nozomi, have you seen Sakura anywhere?" Hikari asked, shooting Tōji a look as she did so.

"Not for a bit," Nozomi shrugged. "Why do you ask?"

"She's missing, and we need to find her!" Tōji declared.

"Please, Nozomi, did she say anything that might give us a clue to where she went?" Hikari pleaded.

"Well, she did go on for quite some time about the Evas and the pilots, and then she said she had to go to the bathroom," Nozomi explained.

"Ha, bathroom break, a classic misdirection," Kensuke commented from behind the group as he snapped a picture.

"Come on, let's go!" the jock exclaimed as he bolted off towards the bathrooms, Hikari and Kensuke close behind. The trio arrived at the bathrooms and Tōji slammed open the doors to the woman's stalls. "Sakura!" Tōji yelled into stalls, getting no response he then sprinted to the nearest blast door entrance of the shelter, it was open.

"Oh no," Hikari moaned as she realized the implications.

Toji immediately rushed outside, calling his little sister's name, with Kensuke by his side, the mad otaku's camera clicking rapidly as he tried to photograph everything at once. However, Hikari lingered at the entrance, unable to make her foot move.

The class rep told herself that Supergirl wouldn't just leave a child out there in the middle of a war zone. The Girl of Steel would save her, but Supergirl wasn't around right then. In her absence, it fell to normal people like her to be heroes.

Still, she couldn't quite make herself move. She would have to make a choice to run out there or return to the shelter soon, and Toji and Kensuke were already putting a lot of distance between themselves and her.

 _How would you feel if it was Nozomi out there?_ she asked herself.

That did it. Swallowing, the class rep charged out into the chaos of the two titans' battlefield. "Wait for me!" she called out to the two boys. She ran out of the relative safety of the shelter and her ears were filled with the sounds of battle, and her eyes were left wanting for a sight of a little girl. She did see the boys, though, and quickly caught up.

"If she wanted to get a good look at the battle, she'll have headed for higher ground," Kensuke yelled over the din of battle.

"Up there!" Hikari pointed to the top of a path that led up the hill.

The trio advanced with great rapidity up the pathway, sparing no heed to the terror that surely awaited them. They reached the apex of their climb, and for a moment, their breath held still. It was a sight both terrible and awe inspiring, two titans locked in a duel to the death that dwarfed everything around them, and darting between the two, the harbinger of a new age fought with a form that seemed to them as small as it was loud.

"Sakura!" Tōji exclaimed suddenly, running towards the little girl that he had just spotted. "Sakura! What are you doing out here?!"

"Oh, hi there, big brother! I just came out to watch the Evas, and then that loud man came out here and started screaming something about 'showing them all', and then . . ." Sakura was cut off by her big brother's arms wrapping around her.

"Don't you ever do that again!" Tōji sobbed. "Do you have any idea how much I . . . don't ever, ever, ever go out of the shelter again! Do you hear me?!"

"Big brother, it's okay. We're okay," Sakura said softly into her brother's shoulder.

Hikari was touched seeing the two of them together, the scene reminding her of the fact that despite his dumb jock exterior Tōji was a sweet and caring boy. It was something she wished she could see under better circumstances. Now, if only she could make up the courage to . . .

"Run!" Kensuke shouted with a finger pointed towards the sky.

Hikari looked up just in time to see a gigantic chunk of ferrocrete flying towards them. It was something that she barely had time to register before it was caught by a blue and red blur. Supergirl had saved them, but the euphoria was as short-lived as the terror. A massive bang sounded behind them, and the four students suddenly found the man in a weird black and white suit standing in a small crater and blocking the way down to the shelter.

"Run to the sewers!" Supergirl yelled over their still ringing ears. "Go! Now!"

The four wasted no time in barreling down the path on the opposite side of the hill. Tōji carried Sakura in his arms, and Hikari grabbed onto Kensuke's wrist to stop him from taking more pictures. Down the steps they ran, the sounds of the two supers duking it out booming and drowning out all other sound. They ran as fast as they felt they could and a little bit faster, their lungs burning with effort like fire.

In their haste, they failed to consider all the variables though, and Hikari slipped on a rock and fell. She let go of Kensuke's wrist and rolled the rest of the way down the hill, eventually coming to a stop against a trash can by the side of the road.

"Hikari!" the others yelled at the top of their lungs.

At the base of the hill, Hikari moaned, but managed to get the strength to bring herself to her feet and lean against the trash can. "I'm all right!" she yelled back. "Go on without me! I'll find another way into the sewers, but you need to get Sakura to safety now! We'll meet up after this is all over!"

Tōji looked pensive for a moment, but Kensuke was the one to yell something back. "We'll go! Just make sure this isn't a heroic sacrifice sort of deal!"

Hikari watched just long enough to confirm that they were moving again before bolting off towards the old part of the city as fast as her aching legs could carry her. From what she knew of local history, the old parts of the city, the ones minimally affected by the remodeling from Hakone to Tokyo-3, were the only parts that had the sewers that doubled as bomb shelters. There was a chance that some bureaucrat might have extended the sewers into the newer parts of the city, but that was a long shot, considering that the main reason for the remodeling was to install elevators for a bunch of skyscrapers and God only knew how many armor plates into the Geofront's ceiling.

If it wasn't for her survival instinct, she would have stopped right then and there to ponder the absurdity of it all. She didn't know why she never realized just how strange the city was before. _Maybe with Supergirl and Batgirl on duty, this city could become something resembling normal_ , Hikari thought, reassured that something sensible was going on.

Her calm was interrupted by part of a building sailing over her head to crash into another. She hit the ground, and hugged the sidewalk she had been running on before like she was the character of some espionage film about World War II. Within a moment, the dust cloud from the destroyed building completely covered her and turned the world brown and gray.

When the initial gust of debris had subsided, Hikari got up and continued running. At least, that's what she tried to do. The dust in the air had combined with the abuse her body had already taken and her lack of physical training to slow her to a crawl. She couldn't go on, she just couldn't, but . . . but she had to. She wanted to. She wasn't going to let the last thing Tōji ever heard from her be her saying that they'd meet up later. That was just too painful, and she couldn't do it.

So she continued on. Her body felt like it was burning, but she continued on. Her lungs were drawing shorter and shorter breaths, but she continued on. She had lost track of what road she was even traveling, but she continued on. She continued on.

Eventually, though, another gust of wind blew by, and she emerged from the dust cloud. There she could see the end in sight. She could see the goal that she had been striving so hard to get to.

Admittedly, a manhole cover wasn't the most epic of goals to reach, but it was her goal. She had reached it, but now a new problem had raised its head. How was she going to get it open?

She tried the traditional knock, but didn't get anything. She could be pounding "shave and a haircut" into that hunk of metal all day and not get anywhere. So her head darted around, trying to find something to give her some leverage to open up the manhole cover herself. Her eyes fell upon the nearby destroyed building, and she decided to find out which wreckage that hardware store sign had come from.

She loped over to the rubble, and began looking for a crowbar or something with a thin end that she could lean on. Nothing seemed to be there on the surface, so she started trying to move aside pieces of rebar and concrete. She tried, and failed. Even if her body hadn't been a wreck, she just wasn't strong enough to move all the debris aside to find what she needed.

Just as she was on the verge of giving herself another motivational speech, however, she caught sight of something blue glinting in the rubble. She carefully climbed over to it and attempted to dislodge it from under the rubble that had fallen over it. It took an excruciatingly long minute, but soon, she was able to yank it out from under the piece of concrete.

It was . . . not at all what she was expecting. She wasn't sure what she had expected, but a bright blue scarab made out of some weird feeling metal definitely wasn't it. She shouldn't have been holding it, she should have laid it where it was, but that left open the possibility of it being stolen by unsavory characters. She could have returned it, but to where? The rubble she was standing in was caused by two buildings crashing into each other, and she didn't get a good look at the flying building before it hit.

Thus it was, in Hikari's estimation, best if she held on to it for a little bit. It was just until she found out who it really belonged to anyway, no harm in that. So she tucked the blue scarab into the custom pocket on the inside of her jumper and went back to looking for a lever.

She didn't have to search long though before the all-clear siren started sounding. It was then that Hikari realized that the sounds of battle had stopped long ago, and that she had been trying to get into the shelters for nothing. So she let out a bitter laugh and started out on her new quest: getting back home.

* * *

It was more than an hour later when she finally stumbled back home. Her body had nearly given out at least a dozen times on the way there, but she had forced herself to go on. She just couldn't give up then, and it looked like her perseverance had paid off. She was finally home, and she had only two more steps to do before she could finally rest.

Reaching into her jumper's pocket and past the strangely warm scarab she took out a pair of keys and held them aloft. Checking to make sure that she was holding the right one, she attempted to unlock the door. It took her several tries, but soon was able to do it.

Once she was inside, she automatically slipped off her shoes and locked the door again. Then, it was just a simple matter of getting over to the phone. She had to call Tōji, she had to know if they were all right.

Once at the phone, it took five minutes of struggle before she was able to remember his number from the list of student phone numbers she had seen earlier. Then she just had to type it in, a task far easier than she thought it would be. That finished, she waited as the ringtone on the other side played until the other end picked up.

 _"Moshi-moshi,"_ Tōji's voice came over the line.

"Tōji! Oh, it's so good to hear your voice," Hikari said without thinking about it.

 _"Hikari?! You're alive! Where are you? Are you all right?"_ Tōji asked, the worry clear in his voice.

"I'm fine, Suzuhara. I'm home right now. I'm just a little tired," Hikari said morosely. "Are you all right? What about Sakura and Aida?"

 _"They're both doing great. Ken ran off to continue reporting as soon as the all-clear came through, and Sakura's right here with me,"_ Tōji replied with a sigh. _"Are you sure you're all right, class rep?"_

"Yeah, I'm fine. I just need to clean off," the dust-covered girl told him in what she hoped was a convincing tone.

 _"OK then, rest up, Hikari. We'll see you soon,"_ he said with a hopeful tone.

"Good night."

 _"Good night."_

With that, Hikari started moving to her room, realizing along the way that it wasn't night yet. Still, she lurched into her abode and threw off her clothes like she did every night. She then went into the wash closet and turned on the shower.

She stood in there for a long time, just standing under the water and letting it run down her body. It came down like rain, and washed away the dust and grime that had accumulated on her body. After standing there for what felt like an hour, Hikari took a bar of soap and went through the rest of her cleaning ritual. When she reached the point where she was almost ready to rinse the shampoo and rubble out of her hair, she noticed that bending and moving around like she had was a lot less painful then it was or should have been. She might have been in some kind of shock, but it also could have just been a natural reaction that reduced everything to a dull ache.

So after drying herself off, Hikari went into her room and considered getting dressed for all of five seconds before falling down on her bed. She was asleep before she had even hit the covers. She stayed like that for some time until her father and sisters came home, her sister tucking her in so that she wasn't mooning anyone who walked through the door.

Hours later, when the rest of the household was asleep, something came alive in Hikari's room. The scarab still in her jumper awoke and started to move. It crawled out of the jumper and onto her bed. Up and then across the covers, it crawled until it eventually reached the thirteen year old girl's exposed head and neck, still face down where she had fallen.

It crawled onto her spine, and then emitted a blue light down onto it before moving beneath the covers. Up and down her spine it traveled, leaving a trail of blue chevrons as it went, and Hikari's body started to break out in sweat, even as her face contorted into a grimace like she was having a bad nightmare. On the third pass, though, the scarab grew in size to the size of a small backpack and dug into the space between Hikari's shoulder blades, the metal fusing with her back.

After all that was done, her face, ironically, took on a look of peace, and for the rest of the night, Horaki Hikari slept soundly.

* * *

Cody's A/N: This was actually the first story I wrote all by myself for SOE, with this and two more chapters being done a little over a year ago. Seeing it finally out in the open is simply grand for me. Also, while it may not look like it now, this is going to be a more lighthearted story compared to some of the other SOE offerings. Y'all will see what I mean next chapter.

General A/N: This week marks the last time simultaneous updates will be given. At least one update a week will still be given out, or we'll try to at least, but our team needs to have time to do other things. Four (soon to be five, and then six, and then seven) updates a week is just crazy as far as a schedule goes.


	2. Issue 2

_True Blue_ #2

Written by Cody Fett

Edited by Cyclone, Bob Regent, and Shinzakura

* * *

Hikari awoke the next morning with the alarm, having slept the best she had in years. It was incredible. Yesterday, she felt like she was about to die, but that morning, she felt like she was on top of the world.

She was also still very naked though, but that was easy to fix. All she had to do was put on her clothes, easy as pie. First, came the underwear, then she put on her bra and clasped it behind her back . . . and then she clasped it behind her back. And then she clasped it behind her back! And then she stretched it and clasped it behind her back! . . . And then she walked over to the mirror above her dresser and looked at what that metal thing on her back was that had been slowing her down. Then she screamed.

"Hikari?!" her father's voice yelled from the other side of the house.

"Hey, sis, what's going on in here?" her older sister Kodama asked as she entered the room.

"AAAAAAAH!" Hikari screamed, grasping at the big blue beetle on her back. "Get it off! Get it off! Get it off!"

"Holy frak! What is that thing?!" the 15-year-old Kodama exclaimed as she backed up slightly.

"Hikari, what's wrong?" Horaki Nishitetsu asked just before entering the room to check on his panicking daughter.

"Don't come in!" Hikari screamed while sticking out her arms towards the door. As if by magic, the big blue beetle on her back came alive, and a blue and black metal shot out to cover her entire body, encasing it in an organic-looking suit of armor. Then, as if that wasn't enough to raise the tension in the room, gigantic cannon-things seemed to explode from her arms to point straight at her father and older sister.

 _"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Calm down!"_ a voice said.

"Calm down?! How can you tell me to calm down when this is happening?!" Hikari shouted, wildly flailing her arms off to the side and causing the cannon-things to shrink back into the armor that was still covering her.

"Uh, sweetie, who are you talking to?" her father asked her worriedly.

"You two. Who else?" Hikari answered matter-of-factually before trying to rip her own face off, or rather the helmet attached to her face.

"We didn't say anything," Kodama confirmed.

 _"Yeah, I was the one talking to you,"_ the voice said again; this time, Hikari recognized how distinct it was... and then screamed again.

"AAAAAAAAAAH! There's a voice in my head! There's a voice in my head! AAAAAAAH!" the class rep panicked.

"Did Hikari finally snap?" Nozomi asked precociously as she strolled into the bedroom. "What is she wearing?"

"I'll explain later," Mr. Horaki explained before going over to lay hands on his daughter's shoulders. "Hikari! Calm down! Breathe."

Hikari stopped failing, stood up straight with the helmet's oddly expressive yellow eyes staring at her father, and slowly but surely, her breathing settled down. "Thanks, Dad," she said with a sigh.

"No problem," he told her. "Now, what's your armor telling you?"

"What?" Hikari asked, dumbfounded.

 _"Oh, my goodness, they can hear me!"_ the voice said cheerfully.

"Those prongs on your shoulders are blinking and making chirping noises when you claim to hear someone talking. It wasn't that hard to put two and two together," Kodama told her.

 _"Aw, man! They can't hear me. I've really got to get this translation matrix fixed. Or find a new way to speak. Either/or, really. I tell you though . . ."_

"What's it saying?" Nozomi asked somewhat curiously.

"It – she, I'm pretty sure it's a she – is just rambling on and on about communications technology," Hikari explained with an ever more confused look upon her helmet.

The voice was rather indignant. _"Hey! I'm not rambling! I'm merely trying to have an intelligent conversation after being stuck in a warehouse for years! Years! Do you have any idea what that's like? The last person who talked to me was Ted Kord, and he couldn't hear me, so all our conversations were really one sided and . . ."_

"Wait, who did you say was the last person you talked to?" Hikari interrupted.

 _"Ted Kord. Why do you ask?"_ the voice answered.

"The armor says the last person it talked to was Ted Kord. Kodama, didn't you do a report on him recently?" Hikari explained, ignoring the voice's question.

"Yeah. He's the CEO of KORD Incorporated, based out of Chicago over in the States. If that armor talked to him last, then it's probably a KORD Inc. product," Kodama replied, her classic "thinking expression" starting to develop.

 _"Hold up! I know where this going on. First of all, I'm not a 'KORD Inc. product,' I'm a self-sustaining weapons platform developed by the Ministry of Conquest for the Reach Empire – don't worry, they're almost certainly gone now – who achieved sapience thanks to magic and escaped to Earth so many years ago that I lost all sense of time. Secondly, the only way I can be removed without seriously injuring or killing you is with specialized equipment that I'm almost positive doesn't exist anymore, or by my own free will, and I don't want to be alone again!"_ the voice interjected.

"I'm going to see Mr. Kord and see if he can get this thing off my back," Hikari informed her family. "Please call the school and tell them . . . I . . . tell them . . . I don't know! Just tell them something convincing!"

"I'll take care of that," Kodama told her as she inadvertently caused a traffic jam at the door trying to get out.

"Don't lie about it!" Hikari yelled at her.

"I can't work under those conditions!" Kodama yelled back.

"You're not really going to give her up, are you, sis?" Nozomi asked her in a sad tone.

"I have to," Hikari told her. "I can't go to school like this, I can't fulfill my duties as class representative like this, I certainly can't go to the bathroom like this."

 _"You know, this armor can retract back into the scarab. You don't have to walk around like you're ready for battle all the time,"_ the voice informed her in a distant tone.

"But you don't have to do that! You could be a superheroine instead! Like Supergirl! You could help save this city instead of living in fear of the Angels or criminals and walking home covered in rubble!" Nozomi shouted at her. "You could be awesome!"

 _"Hey, listen to the small child!"_ the voice suddenly perked up.

"Nozomi, I . . . Dad, talk some sense into her!" Hikari asked her father.

Her father looked pensive, like he was deep in thought over the hardest decision of his life.

"Dad, you can't seriously be considering what she's saying! I can't . . ." suddenly the armor's helmet retracted away, revealing her distraught face and hair before she covered it with her still-armored palms and let loose a frustrated growl.

"Hey! Your face is still there!" Nozomi exclaimed. Hikari just moaned in response.

 _"Told you,"_ the voice said smugly.

"I don't know, Hikari," her dad finally answered, making Hikari drop her hands from her face. "I don't…I won't pretend that I really _want_ you to do this. It's dangerous work, being a superhero, probably even more for a teenager like yourself than for an adult. And if _you_ really don't want to, then I don't think that you should. But... the world is in dire straits these days. It could use more heroes. So I won't forbid you from becoming a superheroine."

"Don't you dare say that I'll have to decide this for myself," Hikari growled.

"Oh, no, wouldn't dream of it. That's far too cliché," Mr. Horaki said with a laugh. "No, what I was going to say is that we should get a second opinion."

 _"Oh! I know! We can ask Mr. Kord; he's a superhero,"_ the voice jumped in.

"Mr. Kord's a superhero?!" Hikari exclaimed, quickly being followed by the rest of her family.

 _"Uh oh, you guys weren't supposed to hear that,"_ the voice realized.

"Oh! Oh! Ask her which superhero he is. I bet he's Aquaman!" Nozomi practically shouted, jumping up and down as she did so.

"No way. I bet he was Batman," Kodama threw in, having come back from calling school. "Also, everyone thinks that you caught a bug yesterday, just so you know."

"I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark and say he was the Blue Beetle," her dad said humorously.

 _"Hey, he got it right . . . and you're not supposed to know that either,"_ the voice chimed in.

"So, it looks like everything leads back to Ted Kord, doesn't it?" Hikari asked morosely.

"Hey, buck up, Hikari," her dad told her with a smile.

"Yeah, it could be worse," her sister informed her.

"You get to fly across the ocean, and see America, and do all these really cool flippy tricks, and you don't even have to pay for a plane ticket!" Nozomi declared.

"How am I supposed to fly across the ocean without a plane?" Hikari asked as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

As if on cue, a quiet hiss resonated throughout the room, and Hikari suddenly found herself floating up into the air on blue jets of force coming from her boots and wings spreading from her back. Remarkably, the 13-year-old managed to keep calm about it. She merely got an annoyed look on her face and crossed her arms.

"You know what?" she asked rhetorically. "I'm not even surprised at this point."

* * *

An hour later, Hikari found herself rocketing across the sea, fully encased in the armor that, she had to admit, was growing on her.

"So," she asked her traveling companion, "where did you get the name Khaji-Da?"

 _"It's technically my serial number,"_ the voice replied.

"I'm sure there's an interesting story there," Hikari said curiously.

 _"Yeah, but that's for another time. You know what's for today?"_ Khaji asked excitedly.

"What?" the class rep asked worriedly.

 _"Transorbital flight!"_ Khaji yelled, a split second before the two of them rocketed up into the sky at a nearly vertical angle, Hikari screaming the whole way.

"Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaji!"

 _"Oh, come on! We were taking forever down there at sea level. Things go so much faster in the upper atmosphere where the air is thinner,"_ Khaji explained matter-of-factually to the screaming girl. _"Now, straighten your limbs out so we fly to America instead of flying off into the aether."_

"That can happen?!"

 _"Theoretically, but it's rare. I'm sure it won't happen to us."_

"I'm sure it won't either, because you are going to turn this suit around _right this instant_!" Hikari demanded.

 _"Just level out. It'll be easy."_

"Easy?!"

 _"Yeah, just level off, or cut off the thrust and point yourself in the direction you want to go before re-applying the thrust if you're in space. Just relax. You're the one in control."_

"And you! You're in control too!"

 _"Hey, you've got to learn how to do this too if we're going to be stuck to each other."_

"How in the world am I supposed to learn any this?! How do the controls even work?! All I'm seeing are a bunch numbers, which are going up very fast, I might add!"

 _"The suit is embedded into your spine. Just think it!"_

"Think what? How do you visualize something like that?!"

The thrusters on the suit abruptly stopped, leaving the two companions to rocket into the upper atmosphere at a slightly slower pace.

"AAAAH! Okay, tuck-in, then straighten out, just like swimming. Now how do I get the thrusters back?"

Said thrusters immediately sprang back to life and caused them to change course at a ninety degree angle headed east.

"How in the world did that work?"

"Magic."

"Magic?!"

"Yeah. Didn't you hear me earlier? I got free will from magic, and I still am magic."

"This is just too weird."

"Hey, for some people this is normal."

"For whom could this _possibly_ be normal?!"

* * *

Deep in the semi-secret laboratory of Theodore "Ted" Kord, science was afoot. Today, after years of work, the project that he had been working on for years would finally be complete. It would become a reality, and with it, the world would change forever.

His work was promptly ruined when a blue and black blur smashed through his lab windows and into his equipment before skidding across the floor and into the opposite wall.

"Who's there?" Ted asked the crumpled form on the floor as he reached for his trusty BB gun. In response, the form spewed some incomprehensible and dazed-sounding chirping... and Japanese. "OK then. Do you speak English?"

"Uh," the form grumbled as it tried to right itself. " _Hai_."

"Um, hello?" Ted replied.

"No, I mean . . ." the form straightened itself out and turned around, revealing itself to be a young girl in a blue and black beetle-themed suit. "Are you Ted Kord?" she asked with an odd accent.

"Yes. I'm Ted Kord, CEO of KORD Inc. Now, who are you?"

"Greetings, Mr. Kord. I'm Horaki Hikari of Tokyo-3," the girl said before bowing deeply. "I am _so_ sorry for destroying your lab."

"Eh, it happens," Ted replied with a wave, putting aside the BB gun. "You, uh, can stop bowing now."

"Oh, sorry!" Hikari said before straightening up again.

"Yeah," Ted said before looking over his lab. "So, what brings you to my humble abode... or what's left of it?"

"I apologize for that, once again, but I came here seeking your assistance. I hoped you would be able to tell me something about the scarab that's now embedded in my spine, or perhaps remove it?" she inquired, almost instantly being followed by the suit's prongs lighting up and chirping rapidly. "Well, if you didn't want me to ask that, you shouldn't have pulled that stunt back there," Hikari said, seemingly to the air besides her.

The prongs chipped again. "I've known you for like two hours. How in the world am I supposed to trust you on that sort of timeframe?" the girl asked the air again, followed by more chirping. "No, I don't think I have an obligation to back you up just because you're fused to my back."

"This is the blue beetle scarab I was studying all those years ago, isn't it?" Ted suddenly asked, walking over to the still suited girl.

"Yeah, that's what Khaji-Da told me, that you were the last person to speak to her," Hikari told him.

"Fascinating. You know, I was always running various tests on it - or she, as it seems to be - but I could never get any kind of feedback from it. I eventually stowed it in a secure projects case, had it shipped off to storage, and never saw it again. Something must have happened . . . when the storage facility in Tokyo-3 was destroyed. Dang it! That means my shrink ray was destroyed too, and that just sucks," Ted rambled. "Still, from tragedy comes science. Tell me everything that led to the scarab coming into your possession."

"Well, there's not much to tell. After the Angel attacked, one of my classmate's siblings went missing, so me, him, and one of my other classmates went to find her. It turned out she had gone out of the shelter, so we followed, and as it happened, when we found her, a fight between Supergirl and some villain drifted our way. We ran towards the catacomb shelters while Supergirl held him off, but in the process, I slipped down the hill and had to find another way in. I did, but couldn't open the manhole so I had to search through the rubble of a building that was destroyed earlier to find something to pry it open, and in the process found Khaji," the prongs chipped again. "Oh, and respiratory problems. . . . What?! What do you mean?" yet more chirping. "Oh my goodness! You're saying that I would have died if it wasn't for you merging with me? That makes sense and . . . Oh, and I've been such a jerk to you, Khaji. I'm sorry. Could you ever forgive me?" One final bit of chirping. "What?! Khaji, you're being unreasonable."

Ted cleared his throat. "Excuse me. I'd hate to interrupt this heart-to-heart, but I'm guessing you don't want me to remove the scarab now?"

" _Ano ~_ . . ." Hikari began timidly, her helmet retracting to reveal her freckled face and black hair. "I suppose you could, but that would feel awfully unfair to Khaji. All she wants is someone to talk to - and some other things that I won't go into - and to just take that away from her after so long seems so cruel."

Then the girl got a bit of steel in her eye, like she was about to take on the world.

"So, I have another question to ask you: what's it like being a superhero?"

That made Ted stop and think for a moment, but only a moment. He had been in the business long enough to contemplate that question a few times, and he had the answer. So in the end all he needed to do was sit down on a nearby stool. "It's the greatest thrill in the world. I was terrified every time I went out," he explained. "It's an odd dichotomy."

"I see," Hikari send pensively.

"Don't get me wrong," he continued. "It wasn't all kittens and cream - there were some pretty bad times there, especially towards the end - but when I was out there stopping criminals and mad apes from hurting people, it was the most alive I had ever been. On top of that, I made some good friends, saw the world, and I like to think I made a positive impression on people too. I wouldn't trade those years for anything."

"But you did stop eventually," Hikari pointed out.

"Yeah, I did," Ted admitted. "I got beat up pretty bad in Second Impact, and by the time I got out of the hospital, it seemed like the world didn't need heroes anymore, but it did need scientists. So focused on my day job, got back to work, and managed to make a fair bit of money while helping people out. Now that Supergirl has shown up, it seems like things are getting back to normal, but my time has passed, and it's time for the next generation to take up the torch."

Hikari's eyes widened as she realized the implication. "What? Me?"

"I don't know," Ted said, crossing his arms as he did so. " _Are_ you part of the next generation of heroes?"

"I. . ." Hikari started before pausing. There was some chirping from the prongs, but she didn't respond. "I want to help people. I want to make sure that people like Tōji's sister can live to see another day, and I want to make something more of my life. I don't want to go along as plain old Hikari while titans duel in the streets and heroes fight across the sky. I've been there. I've been in the shelters and running for my life, not knowing whether I'd live or die and having no control over any of it. I want to do good, and . . . and I really wouldn't mind slugging some of those villains in the face."

She then shifted her view to look Ted straight in the eyes.

"So, yes, I'm part of the next generation of heroes."

"Perfect!" Ted declared, clapping his hands together as he did so. "You can be the second Blue Beetle! Or third, depending on how you count it. You've already got the themed suit to go along with it."

Hikari's eyes widened again. "Third? You mean then was a Blue Beetle before you?"

Ted nodded. "Yep, my mentor, Dan Garret, was the first. He only served for a short time, but he served with honor and distinction. Took down an entire mafia family."

Hikari smiled. "Really?"

"Yep," Ted confirmed. "He told me all about it when I found him in an alleyway with a hundred and forty-seven gunshot wounds in him. Gave me all I needed to fight crime and apologized for not telling me sooner in his final moments. A real hero, that Dan."

Hikari's smile disappeared. "Meep!"

"Don't worry, kid. I'm still kicking," he said before getting up and walking over to her. "I'll be happy to teach you all there is to being the Blue Beetle."

Hikari suddenly became confused. "But you just said you were never able to get the Scarab to activate. Do you actually have any idea this thing works?"

"Well... no," Ted admitted. "But I do know a thing or two about being a hero! Lesson one: have all your affairs in order."

Hikari seemed to get even more squeamish at that.

"Lesson two: lighten up. It's good to plan for the worst, but if you go everywhere expecting nothing but, you'll find stormy waters around every port," Ted explained.

"Ports?" Hikari asked, the prongs seemed to chirp in confusion too.

"A little thing a friend of mine used to say. Now, lesson three's going to be one of the most important ones out there: maintain a secret identity. How many people know that you're the Blue Beetle?" he asked.

"Just my family. My sisters Kodama and Nozomi, and my dad. They were there when I found out Khaji was in my back," Hikari explained.

"Ah, well, can't be helped, but no one else. Understand? The last thing you need is for your archenemies to find out where you sleep, or worse, the press," Ted and Hikari both gave an involuntary shudder at that thought.

"But how's that going to work out when I have Khaji embedded in my spine? Even without the suit, a big blue scarab in my back isn't exactly inconspicuous," Hikari pointed out.

"Hmm, good point," Ted admitted. "We'll have to falsify something about how you'll have to wear looser clothes with long sleeves and other concealing items, and how they'll need a specialist to be looked at so the school nurse is out. And you're going to need the medical records to back up those restrictions. Don't worry though, I know a guy."

* * *

". . . You heard me, Bruce," Ted said over the phone. "Come on, it's for an up and coming heroine. She really needs this done."

Hikari shuffled uncomfortably as she listened to Mr. Kord talk over the phone. She really wasn't enthusiastic about lying to people as the start of her superhero carrier. _I mean, I know I need to protect my family from the press, but can't it be done in a more honest fashion?_ she thought.

"Thanks, buddy. I owe you one," Mr. Kord said before hanging up and turning back to the rookie superheroine. "Okay, thought we'd send you through the wringer, but first, you'll probably want to call your family. If you need to know the international codes, there's a paper with them next to the phone, and don't worry about security concerns, because that line is as secure as a reference that you don't have clearance for."

"Thank you, Mr. Kord," Hikari said before getting up and walking towards the phone. She looked to the side of the phone and found out that there was indeed a note with the numbers needed to call out of the US, to call Japan, and to call Tokyo-3 written on it. Convenient.

" _Moshi-moshi,"_ came the voice of Horaki Kodama.

"Kodama! I'm glad I caught you," Hikari replied in Japanese.

" _Hey, sis. You all right?"_ Kodama asked in an upbeat tone.

"Yeah, I'm fine, and . . . I've decided to take the job," Hikari admitted.

" _You sure about this, sis?"_ Kodama asked. _"This isn't something that you can just walk away from. Once you're in, you're not going to be getting out."_

"Plenty of people have retired from this job," Hikari pointed out.

" _I'd didn't say you wouldn't be able to. What I'm saying is that you won't want to. You'll get started on this, and then you won't stop,"_ Kodama explained. _"I just want to make sure you aren't going to regret this later."_

"I won't. Besides, now that I can do something, I couldn't live with myself doing nothing," Hikari told her.

" _Okay, I can see that, and it sounds like you're pretty serious about this too,"_ Kodama said. _"I'll tell Dad and Nozomi then. Dad will be worried, but he'll roll with it. Nozomi . . ."_

"Nozomi will probably be bouncing off the walls," Hikari finished with a chuckle.

" _That she will. Listen, Hikari, I know you've probably got stuff you've got to get to, so we'll talk later when you get back. That work?"_ Kodama asked.

"Yeah, we'll talk more when I get home," Hikari confirmed.

They said their goodbyes, and then Hikari turned around to find a smiling Ted Kord holding a large remote control.

"You know," he said in English, "this is the point in a film where things would become a montage. You don't have that luxury."

* * *

"Come on, Hikari! This is the easy stuff!" Ted yelled at the panting young girl running on the treadmill.

"There's got to be an easier way to do this. There's no way that this is the easy stuff," Hikari gasped, eternally grateful for the sweatsuit she was wearing.

"Yeah, well, we've got to establish a baseline, so no supersuit!" Ted barked.

* * *

"Hey, this is actually pretty easy," Hikari commented, now decked out the Blue Beetle armor and running on the same treadmill.

"Yes, now let's turn up the speed," Ted commented before fiddling with the remote control.

"Oh no!" Hikari shouted before scrambling to keep up with how fast the treadmill was running.

* * *

"Come on Hikari, lift those weights! They're only 200lbs!" Ted yelled as the girl struggled to lift them even with the scarab armor on.

"I'm doing the best I can!" she shouted back.

" _Actually, you're not,"_ Khaji put in.

"What?" Hikari deadpanned a split second before being beaned in the facemask by the dumbbell she was lifting.

* * *

" _While you're on the job, you're going to be running into to some bizarre situations. This simulation will teach you to expect the unexpected,"_ Ted explained over the intercom from the control room of the holographic simulation room known as the 'Hero Zone'.

"Unexpected. Right, we can do this. Right, Khaji?" Hikari asked as she psyched herself up.

" _Right!"_ Khaji confirmed.

" _Begin,"_ Ted informed them, the entire room changing to become a cityscape.

"Help! Help!" came the imperiled voice of a kindly grandmother nearby.

Hikari jumped into action, flying up into the air and searching for the source of the shouts. She found it in one of the back alleyways where a little old lady was being accosted by a surly looking mugger. Wasting no time, the Blue Beetle hit the ground behind the mugger.

"Stop right there, criminal scum!" Hikari declared to the mugger.

The thug turned around and glared at her. "Beat it, Blue Barnacle! This don't concern you!"

"Resisting, eh? Then taste . . . Khaji, help me out."

" _Concussion blast."_

". . . Concussion blast!" Hikari finished, her hands transforming into cannons that were slightly smaller than the ones she had spawned that morning. Blue beams shot forth from the guns, knocking the crook down and out. "No need to fear, citizen. The police will be here soon to take care of this miscreant," she declared.

"Oh, that's so sweet of you, dear," the dear old lady said before drawing a laser pistol out of her purse. "But I'm afraid you won't live to see them."

"What?!" Hikari and Khaji deadpanned at the same time just before being hit by the laser, ending the scenario.

* * *

" _Defuse that bomb!"_ Ted shouted at them in another simulation.

Hikari looked over from the piles of unconscious ninja bodies surrounding her to find the giant computer with the countdown timer on it. She rocketed over to it, plugged a wire from her wrist into a USB port, and went to work on the computer that had just appeared on her wrist, only to realize that she had no experience either hacking or defusing bombs.

" _Hikari! Let me take this!"_ Khaji exclaimed.

Hikari nodded and pressed the button on her forearm labeled, "Let the AI hack it." Within moments, the countdown stopped at a somewhat anticlimactic 15 seconds.

"Whew. Looks like we got here with time to spare," Hikari said.

" _Simulation failed! Reason: failure to properly quip,"_ a dry computerized voice informed them.

"Oh, come on!" Hikari and Khaji shouted.

* * *

" _Dodge!"_ Ted shouted, just before a torrent of rubber balls shot out of a side in the wall.

Hikari acted instinctively and brought her arms up in front of her face, and then, just as automatically, a giant metal shield sprung into being from those arms. The rubber balls bounced harmlessly off of it, leaving her completely unaffected. The shield retracted, and she got a big smile on her face.

" _That's great, Hikari, but what happens if you're facing an enemy that can get through that shield?"_ Ted asked rhetorically.

"I die?" Hikari asked unsurely.

" _No, you won't die, because you'll dodge! . . . Unless you don't have time. Then, by all means, raise that shield. It looks awesome,"_ Ted elaborated.

* * *

"So, what happens if you find out you're dating a supervillain?" Ted asked the assembled class of one.

Hikari raised her hand. "Try to convert them to the side of righteousness?"

"Wrong!" Ted declared. "That was a trick question. The proper answer is to never date supervillains. It leads to nothing but pain. And Batman."

* * *

"I really think I'm starting to get somewhere," Hikari told Ted many hours after starting her training.

"You're certainly doing that, but it was only your first day," Ted told her as he stumbled over to a waiting seat. "Come back tomorrow at a more reasonable time, and we'll continue your training."

"What? That's it?" Hikari asked. "Come on. I'm pumped and ready to go."

"And I've been up all night," Ted told her. "Get some sleep, it'll do me some good."

"OK then. See you tomorrow, Mr. Kord!" Hikari declared energetically, flying up into the air and almost going through the roof before correcting herself and flying out the hole she had made previously.

"I've really got to get a door for that," Ted blithely observed. "I never expected the next generation of heroes to be so perky after growing in a post-apocalyptic heckhole. I suppose it's good to be wrong."

* * *

Cody's A/N: No more general author's notes due to a lack of simultaneous updates. Something interesting though is that this was originally written in the same GoogleDoc file as chapter one, and finished in the same week too. Yep, I write just about everything using that service these days. I use to rag on it like a lot of other writers, but . . . honestly, it does most of what MicrosoftWord can do, and can be accessed from anywhere. I got really tired of losing or forgetting my flash drives all the time, so it works out great. Besides, if I ever decide to publish anything on FIMfiction again I'll have it easy since they have have a way to add stories to FIMfiction directly from GoogleDocs. Now why does FIMfiction have that, and not FFN? Mostly, it has to do with the unique dynamics of how the MLP fanfic community . . . Wait a second, this is supposed to be about DC and Eva.

Well, as it turns out Ted is a character that is surprisingly easy to write. A little bit of research, a few episodes of TV, a few questions to the right people, and bing-bang-boom suddenly you're writing the character so well that even longtime fans don't find reason to complain. Though, really, considering how many versions of comic book characters there often are I wonder if that could be the start of a blog post on viewing superheroes in a more theoretical sense as opposed to viewing them based on what they did in mainline canon. Perhaps a classic example is the old "Is Superman's secret identity Clark Kent or Kal-El?" debate. (Given the way Lois acts in _New Daughter of Krypton_ I think one should know which side I come down on.)

Rambling aside, I like this chapter. Even more than a year after writing it I can still go back and laugh at it. Which is good, considering that I usually dislike what I write after I write it. The montage scene especially is something I enjoy, and it definitely shows what a few hours of clear vision and a looping play of Joe Esposito's "You're the Best Around" can do for your writing.

Until next time, everyone.


	3. Issue 3

_True Blue_ #3

Written by Cody Fett

Edited by Cyclone, Shinzakura, and Bob Regent

* * *

A few days after discovering the beetle in her back, Hikari was back at school in her role as the representative of class 2-A. And even though she had been having fun training to become the next Blue Beetle, she was glad to finally have control of the class back again. It was an odd feeling to have, but while she had been gone, some things had gone down that had made her appreciate her role as class representative all the more.

"Minami, stand down!"

Which was to say, there had been a power struggle in her absence.

"You tell her, class rep!" Toji cheered from off to the side.

"You be quiet, Suzuhara. You're in hot water too for being the other side of this little civil war," Hikari shot at him before turning her attention back to the school's most popular female and the person that had attempted to take over the position as representative of class 2-A. "Listen to me very carefully, Ushio Minami. This school, this class, is not a dictatorship that you can just seize control of the moment the leader falls ill. I am the duly elected representative of class 2-A, and I will not allow for you or anyone else trying to do just that, even in my name. So I'll tell you again: stand down."

Minami just stared back at her, her features the perfect picture of absolute boredom. Granted, those features were fantastically gorgeous, to the point where Hikari was supremely thankful that the conflict of the last few days had driven a rift between her and Toji; the younger girl did not want the competition when she inevitably... probably... _possibly_ revealed her feelings for the jock. She really did look like what she had done hadn't really sunk in and was merely staring at Hikari because she had nothing else to do at that moment.

"Okay," Minami suddenly said with a shrug of her shoulders.

"Okay?" Hikari asked, dumbfounded that the girl that had been arguing tooth and nail with her just a few minutes ago was now just giving up.

"Yeah. Okay. You can have your job, and I won't fight it, okay?" Minami elaborated in a blase fashion.

Hikari just stared intently at her for a few tense more seconds, and then sighed. "You'll be the one cleaning up the classroom for the rest of the week."

"Yes!" Toji cheered.

"Toji, you get the following week," Hikari told him, and as he was bemoaning his punishment, she turned back to the students that had arrived in the classroom before the classes technically started. "Everyone else better keep their minds on their studies."

The class made motions to look like they were getting ready and not looking at the spectacle, and as the rest of the class filed in, it seemed like it really would be mostly forgotten. It was just fine with Hikari, as it gave her time to adjust to sitting in her new uniform. Not to mention the voice inside her head.

The uniform was a baggy affair, with a poofy lightweight top with long sleeves and an equally long skirt that almost felt like it was draping past her ankles. The design was a modification of the normal girl's school uniform, built with the intention of being used by any female student who got seriously injured and/or disfigured during the fighting. It was something she never thought about or thought she'd be using, but because of the colossal lie that had been built up to cover the beetle in her back, she was locked into it.

That beetle, and its controlling intelligence, were perhaps the cause of even bigger problems for Hikari. During the days she had been away, she felt free to converse with Khaji-Da all the time, but that had been around family and friends. Talking to a voice that only she could hear was obviously not something that she wanted to engage in in public, however.

" _Sooooooooo, that was awesome,"_ Khaji said out of the blue.

/That was my job,/ Hikari typed into her laptop, knowing that the magic AI in her noggin would see what she was doing, somehow.

" _Well, you're good at it. Your job, that is,"_ Khaji responded.

/Oh, no, I'm not that good. Really, there are better class representatives out there,/ Hikari typed humbly.

" _Well, you're the best I've ever known,"_ Khaji countered.

/I'm the only one you've ever known,/ Hikari pointed out.

" _And you've made a good impression for all class representatives. Listen, just accept the compliment and move on,"_ Khaji insisted.

Hikari was about to type a response when she was interrupted by the door to class opening up and the teacher walking in.

"Stand! Bow! Sit!" Hikari belted out mechanically, jumping to perform the motions of the daily routine.

"Thank you, Hikari. It's good to have you back," Miss Asaji said as she took her seat. "OK class, we're going to be starting on solving formulas where only one of the variables is known, and don't you dare tell me it's impossible, because a girl in America just did it on TV. No, you can't see the video. You'll be seeing only numbers for the next hour."

" _Lucky you have a living calculator in your head, huh?"_

/Shhh, no talking. I don't want to cheat and ruin my education./

" _Cheat? I'm fused to your spine!"_

/And that changes things how?/

" _We're practically one and the same! On some planets. Under certain legal opinions."_

/Then I'll be doing this with half my brain tied behind my back./

" _From a certain point of view, you're right."_

* * *

The hours ticked by, and the whole time, Khaji-Da grew more and more bored. The math had been one thing, but the science and the English had been quite another. The science teacher had been a bore, a cowardly bore, and the English teacher was such a goody too shoes that she expected him to spontaneously sprout wings and ascend to a higher plane of existence. That guy made Hikari look like a demon, which she totally wasn't.

That left them with the history teacher before lunch, and as the doddering old man came into the classroom, Khaji just knew that it was going to another one of those classes. She would get bored, end up going into sleep mode, and then Hikari would complain about the snoring later on. That was a preposterous statement, but she'd say it all the same.

Hikari did her routine, the teacher placed his books on the desk, and then he walked over to the chalkboard. He stood there for a good fifteen seconds, and Khaji was beginning to wonder if the old man had fallen asleep. Just as she was about to ask Hikari if that had happened, the teacher exploded into movement, writing on the board in a truly bold font that made one stand up and take notice.

"Heroes!" he declared, raising his hands towards the ceiling. "There were many of them," he said before whipping around like a top and pointing at Hikari. "Class Representative Horaki! Tell me everything you know about the Blue Beetle!"

" _By the maker, don't!"_ Khaji screamed in her head.

". . . The Blue Beetle was a hero based out of, uh, Chicago, Illinois," Hikari began, struggling to answer the question while keeping secret that not only did she personally know the Blue Beetle, but that she had taken on the mantle herself. "He was known for his use of gadgets and acrobatics. His rogues gallery included people like Carapax and Doctor Alchemy."

"Correct on all counts!" the teacher declared, beginning to pace dramatically. "Now, think about that. Not a superpower to speak of, and yet he was going up against superpowered and magical criminals armed only with his wits and the equipment he had made for himself. He is a lesson to everyone that you don't have to have superpowers - or be Batman - to make a difference in the world."

" _Whew! Had me worried there for a second. Next time, let's not cut it so close,"_ Khaji said with satisfaction.

/How could we have avoided that? He asked me a direct question./

" _Uh, you could have lied, told him you didn't know anything. That could have worked."_

/Lied?! I couldn't do that, that's immoral./

" _Are you kidding me? How in the world are you going to keep your secret identity then? Avoid answering direct questions about where you were last night or why you took 45 minutes to go to the bathroom?"_

/Yes./

A dull thud sounded through Hikari's head.

/If you're trying to make the sound of a head hitting a desk you're doing it wrong,/ Hikari typed cheekily.

Khaji-Da just simulated groaning as the teacher continued his excited lecture.

* * *

At lunch, Hikari was sitting alone on the roof of the school, looking out on the western side of Tokyo-3. It was the good side, the clean side, the super-advanced side, the only _mildly_ infested with corruption and organized crime side, and it was also the side that Hikari didn't live in. No, she and her family lived on the east side, the side that resembled the darkness of Bludhaven far more than the shining pillar of Gotham City.

Still, she wasn't mad about that at all. It was just the way things worked, and she frankly wouldn't trade the east side problems for the west side's problems at all. That was mainly because the last two Angels focused their attacks on the west side. Hikari could deal with a few muggers, but a giant purple Diplocaulidae bug thing with giant laser whip arms tearing through her home every few weeks was definitely a deal breaker in terms of real estate.

It was a line of thinking brought home by the sight of the KORD Inc. building being rebuilt after the last slugging match.

Hikari was brought out of her thoughts, not by Khaji, but rather by the door to the roof opening. She spun around and prepared for a fight, only to find her crush. Toji Suzuhara was coming onto the rooftop, looking for all the world like the most awkward person in it.

"Um, hi," he said sheepishly before walking closer. "Listen, I don't know if . . . what I'm trying to say is . . . oh, man."

" _You know, Suzuhara,_ " Hikari began in English, for the moment holding back on eating her sandwich, " _the Americans have a saying, 'Get to the point.' Or some variation thereof,_ " she paused for a moment before continuing in Japanese. "It can be used in a rude manner as a way of telling people to hurry up and finish talking, but at its heart, it's telling other people to be direct. I think you should heed that saying."

Toji looked stunned for a second, but quickly composed himself. "Class Representative Horaki, I wish to apologize to you," he declared with a bow.

Hikari blinked, idly wondering whether or not she'd get to finish the last few bites of her sandwich. "Sorry? For what?"

"For getting you involved in my search for Sakura. If you hadn't gone outside, then you never would have gotten separated, and if you never had gotten separated, then you wouldn't have gotten hurt, and . . . and . . ."

"Suzuhara!" Hikari interrupted. "You have nothing to apologize for. I would do it all again in a heartbeat."

" _I certainly would,"_ the voice of Khaji-Da chimed in in Hikari's head.

"Quiet, you," Hikari shot back, making Toji raise his eyebrow slightly. "Not you, Suzuhara. Well, OK, yes, you. You really don't have to apologize for anything, because it was my choice to do what I did, not yours."

Toji seemed despondent for a few seconds, collecting his thoughts. "I just wish that there was a way for me to make it up to you."

"Can you let me eat my sandwich?" Hikari asked.

"Uh, yes?"

"Groovy," the twin-tailed girl replied before eating the rest of her sandwich as fast as she could. "Now, I think that we ought to . . ." she was interrupted by a call on her cell phone. "Hold on, Suzuhara."

She bounded over behind the stairway entrance, and as soon as she did a small blue earpiece and cord extended out from Hikari's back. "Moshi-moshi," she said quietly.

" _Hikari! Great, glad I caught you,"_ came the voice of Ted Kord, KORD Inc. CEO, the former Blue Beetle, and Hikari's current mentor. _"Listen, sensors have picked up a large metal object flying towards the Earth. Since you can survive in a vacuum with that suit on, it would be best if you went and checked it out."_

" _Whoop! First mission!"_ Khaji cheered loudly, amazingly without Mr. Kord hearing her.

"No, both of you, I'm in school right now," Hikari explained, knowing the moment that she had dreaded was finally upon her. "Can't Supergirl handle it?"

 _"Hikari,"_ Ted explained, _"Supergirl can't breath in space."_

"Oh . . . shoot. Well then how am I supposed to get out of school?" the class representative asked.

" _Well, make something up,"_ Khaji suggested, making Hikari grimace.

" _Just say that something's come come up, that you need to deal with it, and that someone you trust is in change until you get back,"_ Mr. Kord supplied helpfully.

"OK, _that_ I can work with. Mr. Kord, I'll get back to you," Hikari replied before shutting off the line and swinging back around the entrance to face Toji.

" _My way would have led to crazy hijinks and wacky shenanigans,"_ Khaji grumbled.

Hikari ignored her as she started talking to Toji. "Suzuhara, something's come up, and I need to go. Where's Aida?"

"Ken? He ran off soon after lunch started, said something about Wonder Woman being afoot. Why do you ask?" Toji inquired, growing more confused by the moment.

"I need to find someone to take over my duties while I'm gone," Hikari explained as she opened the door to the stairway.

"Hey, I . . ." Toji began before being cut off by a glare from Hikari. "Shutting up now."

* * *

A few minutes later, Hikari found herself rocketing out of the Earth's atmosphere at truly mind-boggling speeds.

"I sure hope Johan doesn't resent me too much," Hikari reflected as she tried to angle her body onto the proper approach vector with the target, as indicated by her HUD.

" _I'm sure it'll be fine. The chances of something going wrong in that job is statistically low because of how unimportant it is,"_ Khaji replied in her characteristically upbeat fashion.

"Gee, thanks," Hikari said with a frown that only deepened after a few seconds. "I think you're becoming a bad influence on me. I never used to be this snarky."

" _Hey, in my view, that's perfectly healthy,"_ Khaji replied.

 _Yeah, and that's part of the problem_ , Hikari thought before a ringtone sounded. "Moshi-moshi," she replied habitually, activating the suit's comm systems as she did so.

" _Hikari, have you breached the upper atmosphere yet?"_ Ted asked in a professional tone.

"Yes, and I've set up an approach vector. I told the class that Ms. Asaji's lessons would come in handy some day," Hikari replied happily.

 _"Okay, good. Looks like the object is a ship that appears to be damaged. They might need assistance with their repairs,"_ Ted informed her. _"In the possible event that they're hostile, you'll have to further disable their ship. I recommend smashing the engines with a giant hammer for that."_

" _Ooooooh! I like this plan! Hey, maybe if that doesn't work, I can use the kill-laser, well,_ a _kill-laser,"_ Khaji cheered.

"No kill-lasers!" Hikari shouted. "I'm a heroine, not John Rambo."

" _Well, if you look at the second and third films, John Rambo was the hero,"_ Ted supplied in a somewhat unhelpful way. _"Which is to say, I'm sure Khaji will be able to get her kicks in if you come up against some drones. Evil doers love robot minions."_

"Well, I'm sure this is just some poor tourists who need a patch job," Hikari told them. "I'll do some welding, throw out a quip or two, and then be back before lunch is over."

" _Uh, we're getting within visual sensor range now, and it looks like they have some pretty big guns on that thing,"_ Khaji told her a few seconds later.

"Hey, maybe they're space-American tourists. We shouldn't go around judging other cultures," the suited-girl reasoned.

" _That multicultural hogwash they've been teaching you in school ain't going to be getting you far, kid. And hey! What do you mean space-Americans?"_ Ted exclaimed in her ear.

"Uh, can't talk right now, hailing the stricken ship!" Hikari replied before doing just that. "Greetings, space travellers! I am the Blue Beetle of Earth, here to help! What is the nature of your emergency?"

It was an awkward minute before the ship replied. _"Uh, are you a hero or a villain?"_

* * *

" _Never fear, good citizen, I am a heroine,"_ the 'Blue Beetle' answered over the comms.

"What do we do, boss?" the snivelling toadie asked the captain.

"Hmm, this is a tricky situation that you've gotten us into, but luckily, I, the great and fearless space pirate Kanjar Ro, am currently thinking of a cunning solution to this," the captain of the vessel declared with unnecessary flair. "Keep the universal translator off the 'pirate' setting and direct her to go in front of hangar four. She'll have a little surprise there."

Kanjar Ro began to laugh evilly, and most of his crew joined in. They knew what was coming, and they were confident that their evil scheme would come to fruition. Nothing could stop them now!

* * *

" _I've got a bad feeling about this,"_ Khaji voiced as they drifted closer to the hanger.

Hikari debated throwing back a line about her worrying too much, but then thought it over. "Yeah, I think you might be right. I've got it too. Let's just get this over with."

" _I'm readying weapons."_

"Aren't your weapons always ready?"

" _Well, yeah, but this time, they'll be even more ready."_

"How could you possibly get more ready then 'always ready'?"

" _Look, it's a science . . ."  
_

Khaji was cut off by the hangar doors flying open and a giant robotic fist rushing out to collide with them, sending them flying across space.

"What was that?!" Hikari exclaimed as she tried to right herself.

" _ **No loot escapes the Loothunters!"**_

" _Call me crazy, but I think it's a Loothunter,"_ Khaji replied.

Hikari finally righted the suit and looked out at what was attacking them. It was a huge and slightly used metal man that towered above her and looked vaguely like an old time pirate, complete with a muzzleloader-esque cannon mounted above its right arm. "A giant robot space pirate, of course," Hikari deadpanned, dodging the large metal spheroid bomb with self oxidizing fuse that had been fired from the cannon as she did so.

" _Okay, this is going to be cool,"_ Khaji said with a mental grin as the suit's arms turned into arm cannons.

"Only if we survive," Hikari pointed out as they dodged the Loothunter's giant laser cutlass.

They fired off a pair of concussion blasts at the giant robot, seemingly having little effect.

" _Yeah, but that's pretty much a guarantee; we're the heroines after all!"_

"Need I remind you what happened to Dan Garrett?!"

They dodged another swing of the laser cutlass.

" _A fluke, surely,"_ Khaji replied before a ringtone filled the helmet.

" _Hikari!"_ came Kodama's panicked voice over the comm line. _"Where the heck are you?"_

"Fighting a giant pirate robot in space," Hikari answered honestly, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

" _What? Wait, no, forget that, you've got to get back here. An Angel is attacking right now!"_ Kodama yelled, some of the sounds in the background growing louder. _"We're running for the shelters now, but we sure could use a heroine swooping in from the sky."_

"An Angel?! I'll be there as fast as I can. You just get to a safe place!" Hikari told her, the suit starting to feel a lot more cramped.

" _Can do, and Hikari . . . stay safe,"_ Kodama said slightly sadly.

"I will," she replied as the line went dead.

" _Hikari, what's an Angel? My language files aren't providing proper context to something that would attack a city,"_ Khaji-Da asked curiously.

"What?! How can you not know what . . ." Hikari began before being cut off by the battle.

Another burst of cannon shot, this time with two balls connected by a chain, were fired at them. They barely had enough time to duck before the chain shot flew through the space they had occupied just a short second beforehand. Hikari saw the giant chain itself pass over her face by just a few scant centimeters in slow motion. If she had been in the atmosphere, she realized, the pressure alone would have torn her head off.

"Right, we need a plan to beat this guy, and quick."

* * *

"Heh heh heh," Kanjar Ro chuckled to himself as he stared down at the blue-green world that now filled their viewscreens. "Look at the foolish primitives. They have no idea what is about to befall them. Their big dumb faces know only contentment and weakness right now."

"Um, sir, we're too far up to see their faces," one of the smaller crewmen pointed out.

Kanjar's face merely sagged, as if he had gotten stuck in the shuttle with his least favorite family member. "Now, you see, Smitty, that's why you're still buck cabin boy fourth class. No imagination," he said to the crewman before turning back to the viewscreens. "Now then, begin pillaging!"

As if on cue, a bright flash appeared on the northern part of the planet.*

"But not there!" Kanjar Ro amended. "Stay far away from there! Like that southern pair of islands there. The northern one, _there_! Sensors are saying there's a lot of technology in one of those cities that we can use to patch the ship up, and we can stay away from those big explosions."

"Wow, sir, you're so smart!" one of the toadies responded with equal amount sincerity and naivete.

"Yes, yes, I know," Kanjar replied with false modesty before gesturing dramatically at the screens. "Now then, deploy the robot raiding party!"

* * *

Out from the bowels of the ship, a swarm of robots came. They swooped down into the atmosphere like baleful bats bellowing from the bowels of a belligerent belfry, blasting below into the bountiful bosom of the beleaguered battlements they'd been bequeathed to batter. Their hawk-like forms promised only devastation to the people of the city, devastation and theft.

* * *

" _I've got it!"_ Khaji suddenly cheered. _"Hyperspace window!"_

"What's that?" Hikari asked as she continued to dodge attacks.

" _Just trust me!"_ Khaji declared before a relatively large cloud of blue-white energy opened up in front of them. They flew in, and the cloud disappeared.

The Loothunter looked briefly perplexed before the cloud reappeared behind him.

" _Now!"_ Khaji shouted as Hikari whipped her arms down to point at the giant robot. From those arms sprang two gigantic cannons that dwarfed the girl and her armor, growing by an order of magnitude more before their tips started to glow like the Sirius star. Then, suddenly, twin blue beams materialized in from of the massive guns, their ends burning into the back of the Loothunter.

" _ **Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrr!"**_ the robot cried out as the beams tore through its torso and out the other side, disabling it almost instantly.

" _Yeeha!"_ Khaji-Da cheered as the robot exploded inexplicably. Just as quickly, though, they were flying off back to Earth. _"Whoa! Slow down. Not even a quip?"_

"We don't have time, Khaji!" Hikari yelled back angrily. "Patch me back through to Mr. Kord."

" _Mission control here, what do you need?"_ Ted asked jovially.

"I need an update on what's happening in Tokyo-3, Mr. Kord. No theatrics!" she declared hotly.

" _Whoa. Cool your jets, kid. Just give me a second; I'll find out what's up,"_ he replied.

For several tense seconds, the only thing Hikari could hear was her own heightened breathing. To her, it made a hard situation even harder, and the suit even more cramped. She wanted to take off the suit so badly, to feel air passing over her face without being sent through twelve different filters, but she knew that if she did she would only be inviting her own death.

" _Okay, I've got it. An Angel is attacking the city, but it looks like they're sending up an Eva, and Supergirl has been sighted in the area. But Hikari, that's not all,"_ Ted told her, his voice growing more grim with that last sentence.

"What do you mean, Mr. Kord?" Hikari asked.

" _Those pirates who sent that repurposed Manhunter against you have launched an attack on Auckland, New Zealand. They've sent a swarm of robots against the city, and it looks like the New Zealanders aren't going to fend them off before they do whatever foul purpose they came to do,"_ Ted explained. _"Hikari, this shouldn't have happened on your first mission, but it did, and now you've got a choice to make. Do you go help against the Angel, or do you go it alone against the pirates? The choice is yours."_

"The choice is mine?" Hikari asked incredulously. "The lives of millions are at stake, and you're letting the decision rest in the hands of a thirteen year old girl?"

" _Yep. This is all part of being a hero!"_ Khaji-Da confirmed with an out-of-place upbeat attitude.

Hikari was torn. She had to protect her family, she had to defend her city, she had to strike back against the giant monsters attacking humanity, but . . . but there was more evil in the universe than giant monsters, she realized. She would be destroyed if anything happened to her family, but they had Supergirl and Nerv watching out for them, the people of Auckland didn't have that. They were defenseless as the pirates closed in on them, and the people there had families, too. If she went to New Zealand then her family could be hurt, but if she didn't then thousands of other families would be hurt.

With a start, she realized that the choice she had was no choice at all.

"Khaji, plot a course to Auckland and lay on the the power; we can't let those people die," Hikari declared.

" _Good job, kid. You made the right call,"_ Ted told her.

"The right call, huh? And what would have happened if I had chosen differently?" Hikari asked as a trail of boxes appeared on her HUD.

" _No need to think about that, Hikari. Just focus on the job in front of you,"_ Ted said as the suit continued to accelerate towards the now gigantic Earth.

As they entered the atmosphere, the skin of the beetle suit started to glow red from the isentropic heating of the air molecules within the compression wave, and Hikari instinctively put her arms up to form the Shell Shield, as Ted had taken to calling the beatle-themed metal plates that deployed from her arms. She had to use the HUD to guide herself in, but that wasn't as bad as she thought it would be. That is, at least until a bright blue warning about " **OPPORTUNITY SPOTTED!** " popped up.

"Khaji, what is this?" Hikari asked, trying her best to focus on the guidance trail behind the warning.

" _A sensor malfunction. At least, I think it is,"_ Khaji told her frantically. _"I haven't felt this presence in a long time, and . . . No, it's impossible. It has to be. This is just a distraction from the mission. I'll get this warning out of your face, and we can get back to smashing bad guys' faces in."_

The warning disappeared, and soon after, the glow from the shield did too. Hikari felt confident enough that she lowered the shield. What she saw when she did took her breath away.

The ocean spread out beneath her like a blue blanket, covering the surface in a veil of comfort and mystery. Above her, the sky seemed to stretch into infinity, and was broken only by what seemed like the most perfect clouds in existence. In front lay the Northern Island of New Zealand, vibrant in its greenery and breathtaking to behold.

Hikari frowned, though, when she saw what was above the city that she was being lead to. A cloud seemingly made out of thousands of individual parts hung angrily over the city like a swarm of angry bees. That just simply wouldn't do.

"Khaji," Hikari began as they shot towards the city at several times the speed of sound, "how many guns can you create?"

" _A lot. Like, a lot a lot,"_ Khaji answered vaguely.

"Spawn them all," Hikari smiled at the gasp in her head. "Give me control of the ones on my arms. You control the rest."

The girlish squeal echoing through Hikari's skull was only ended by the sound and sight of a terrific amount of direct and indirect fire weapons appearing all over her body. _"It was physically impossible for me to spawn all the weapons in my arsenal, but I hope this is satisfactory,"_ Khaji asked her happily.

"Oh, it is," Hikari answered cheekily, even as her thoughts raged. _Stay safe, everyone. I'm coming for you just as soon as these pirates are dealt with._

* * *

"Captain, our robots have reached the city," one of the snivelling toadies on the bridge informed Kanjar Ro.

"Ah, thank you, minion. Set up a broadcast and set the universal translator to, 'pirate,'" the dread pirate said as he picked up the microphone in front of him. "Hello denizens of this pitiful planet you call home. It is I, the dread pirate Kanjar Ro, here to pillage all your valuables and steal all your belongings. Now, we can either do the easy way or the hard way. Just leave all your worldly possessions on the street in front of you, and my robots will take care of the rest. Fail to do so, and the robots will still pick up your valuables, just through your homes instead. Now, work fast, my robots will begin shooting you and looting you in, oh, 52 seconds. Have a nice day."

"Wow, sir, that was an incredible speech," the complementary toady extolled enthusiastically.

"Yes, yes, I know. I just hope the translator didn't flub it again," Kanjar said with a great deal of false modesty.

"Um, sir, the Blue Beetle's back," Smitty informed him drolly.

"WHAT?! That Manhunter was supposed to take care of her. No man escapes the Manhunters! Not unless you're one of those blasted glowsticks," Kanjar said dramatically, flying into a rage.

"She, uh, seems to be flying towards the city," Smitty told them.

"No! Have the robots take what they can and get out of there. There's no way they can withstand firepower of a magnitude great enough to destroy the Loothunter," Kanjar exclaimed.

* * *

As the Blue Beetle closed in on the city Hikari had just one request.

"Khaji, could you give them the good news?"

" _With missiles!"_ The magic AI cheered. Almost instantly afterwards a swarm of bright blue spheres of energy exploded from all over the suit and began arcing ahead of them. Each one headed for a different robot.

The fiends scattered and dodged, naturally, but they couldn't escape all of the ordnance leveled against them. Within seconds, the sky was filled with hundreds of explosions as the missiles detonated against any robotic target they could find. As those in the sky were decimated, the Blue Beetle exploited the opening and dove towards the ground.

The Blue Beetle flipped, and giant gouts of flame erupted from her suit's feet as she tried to slow down, turrets on her suit firing the whole way. The pillars of thrust collided with one of the larger robots on the ground and melted it clean in half. She hit the molten wreckage and rolled, bouncing up off the ground and breaking out into a superhuman sprint.

She saw one of the robots trying to carry away an armored car and fired twin laser beams from her arm cannons that sliced its arms and legs off before one of the semi-automatic turrets finished it off. She saw another trying to make off with valuable electronic merchandise and blasted it with another missile. She saw one trying to steal an old lady's purse; she raised an eyebrow at that before taking it out with a punch to the face.

"A mugging for a mugging, eh?" she quipped, not bothering to check her English before rushing off to fight more robots.

" _Hikari, terrible news!"_

"What is it, Khaji? Are they going to blow up the city?" the class rep asked as she slid under a giant enemy crab droid and fired a plasma beam into its belly, causing it explode spectacularly.

" _Worse! They're retreating. . . . Which, yeah, I suppose means that they're about to blow up the city."_

"Not on my watch!" Hikari loudly declared before deploying the suit's jets and shooting into the sky like a rocket as she followed the retreating robots.

* * *

"She's still coming after us, sir!" one of the toadies screamed as the Blue Beetle ascended to meet them.

"Is our FTL operational again?" Kanjar Ro asked, maintaining his cool as much as he could.

"Barely, we could make a short jump, but then we'd be right back where we started," Smitty informed him.

"It'll have to do. Send a fourth of the remaining robots to double back and attack the city as a distraction - make sure they aren't carrying any loot! - then once the other robots are onboard, we jump out of here," Kanjar ordered confidently.

* * *

"Whoa!" Hikari and Khaji said simultaneously as a group of robots suddenly swung back around and headed towards the city beneath them.

" _Avast, Blue Beetle! Tell me, are ye 'ard enough to stop those robots before they hit the ground and prove just how deadly a scoop at high speed is?"_ Kanjar Ro's mocking pirate voice came over the comms. _"Me crew says you aren't, but I say you're at least 'ard enough to stop one. HAHAHAHAHA!"_

"You fiend! You won't get away with this!" Hikari shot back before reversing course as fast as she could.

" _Good luck, lass!"_ Kanjar said mockingly before cutting the line.

Hikari just growled in response. _Focus, girl. You can get him later. Right now you've got to-Of course!_

"Khaji, hyperspace window!" Hikari said as she laid on the speed.

" _Got it!"_ Khaji said a split second before a blue cloud appeared before them and they disappeared.

The Blue Beetle reappeared from another cloud just above the city and whipped around to face the plummeting bots.

"Now, AGAIN!" Hikari screamed just before another cloud of a hyperspace window opened up above them.

The robots all fell through like rain, never having gotten the order to pull up. Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the window closed and the cloud disappeared.

" _Good news, Hikari. The robots are gone, and Kanjar Ro ran away out of the system with his tail between his legs,"_ Ted Kord's comforting voice came over the radio.

Hikari breathed a massive sigh of relief. The city was safe, but . . . "He got away," she said sadly.

" _Hey, Hikari, the city's safe, you're safe, it looks like the people are all right too, and Khaji-Da even got to flex its weapon muscles. Do you know what we call that in the biz?"_ Ted asked.

"What?"

" _A pretty good day."_

* * *

*What was that flash, and what caused it? Find out in _New Daughter of Krypton_ #8!

* * *

Cody's A/N: That update should be released some time this weekend, by the way. . . . This is the last full chapter that was pre-made before the release of the SOE: Legacies series, and it was by far one of the most fun to write. Admittedly, from a technical perspective I liked writing it because I didn't have to do any complex melee fight choreography - I don't know how many have noticed, but I tend to skip over the details of a lot of other SOE fights because I don't know how to throw a punch and can't really conceptualize melee fights that well. Ranged fighting though? That I can do.

Of course, the fact that I like writing comedy and this is a humor story probably helps too.


	4. Issue 4

_True Blue_ #4

Written by Cody MacArthur Fett

Edited by Cyclone and Bob Regent and Mike313

Thanks to Gregg Landsman for help with the Korean naming scheme.

SOESOE

"Extra! Extra! Read all about it! 'Supergirl slices floating diamond while Blue Beetle saves New Zealand from space pirates!' Illuminate these events and more with _The Torch_!" a well-dressed looking young newsie called out on the early morning streets of Tokyo-3.

"I'll take one of those, young man," Horaki Nishitetsu said as he walked by on his way to work. He paid the newsie and took a copy of the paper before going on his way. His daughter may not have cared all that much what the press said about her, but he certainly did.

He passed through the entryway to one of the tramlines down into the GeoFront with great rapidity so that he could get a good spot to read the paper. He was able to do so and promptly set about his task.

 _Hmm, looks like this Jackson fellow painted a pretty flattering picture of my little Hikari, even if he does seem to be running out of ways to say 'blue,'_ Mr. Horaki mused as the tram filled up.

SOESOE

" _You've got a busy week out there, kid. Not only is that competitor to the Evas going to be demonstrated, but the Bialyan ambassador to Japan is going to arriving in your city,"_ Mr. Kord reported over the secure comline.

"Those don't sound like things to get too worked up over," Hikari commented as she held up an unactivated mobile phone to her ear.

" _You'd be surprised. They don't look like much, but those two events are bound to be hotbeds of action. The visit by the ambassador especially. I'm telling you now, Hikari, the Bialyans are trouble. I tangled with them a few times in the past, and they're nothing to sneeze at,"_ Mr. Kord told her through the thin earpiece snaking out from the Scarab embedded in Hikari's back.

" _Hikari, heads up. There's an altercation occurring in the girls' bathroom just up ahead. Looks like someone's about to get their teeth knocked out by a big guy and his partner. I recommend that this situation be resolved with the judicious application of violence,"_ Khaji-Da told Hikari in her mind just a second later.

"I've got to go. I'll talk to you later," Hikari said before going through the motions of ending the non-existent call on her phone. The call ended, but the actual earpiece that she had been using stayed in. If anyone asked, it was just an odd hands-free device for her phone.

"And no, Khaji, I'm not going to beat anyone up," the class representative told the voice in her head.

" _Awwwwwwww."_

"Unless they won't immediately stop."

" _Yay!"_

Hikari opened the door to the bathroom and walked in to find the bullies fully engrossed in their threats and oblivious to the world around them.

One of them was a short and weedy Japanese boy with a fake tan and bleached blond hair that reached down to his neck. The fakeness of his appearance was matched only by the tackiness of his outfit. Hikari was left glad that the school made everyone wear uniforms, lest she go blind from his normal clothes.

The other was a huge Chinese girl whose shoulder-length black hair was done up in cornrows. She was wearing a tracksuit that did nothing to hide her heavily-muscled frame and perhaps even enhanced it. The furious look on her features further contributed to making her the more threatening of the pair.

The girl they were currently threatening was being held up against the wall by her jumper. She was completely unremarkable and generic, the sort of person who could be mistaken for anyone or get lost forever with no one getting broken up over it. She was also an innocent who was being attacked by a bunch of bullies, and Hikari wouldn't let anyone be forgotten.

"Hey! What do you two think you're doing?!" Hikari demanded loudly, catching the attention of the two bullies.

The girl, Lú "Big Bertha" Xùróng, whipped most of her body around to face Hikari with hate in her eyes. "Stay outta this, Class Rep!" Lu shouted. "This is between us and the newcomer."

"Yeah. You're, like, totally not even our class rep," the boy, Miki Kojiro, told her. "You literally have, like, no authority here. HAHAHAHAHHAA!"

Hikari cringed internally at the boy's valley girl-esque laughter and terrible grammar, it being like nails on the chalkboard of her mind.

" _I would feel no regrets about killing him,"_ Khaji stated simply.

Hikari on the outside got a smile though. "Ah, but you see that's where you're wrong, Kojiro," she said calmly. "Regulation 14:31:19/T of the student handbook clearly states that class representatives have the authority to intervene in disciplinary matters of students of another class when students of their own class are involved in the matter."

"Wait… what?" Kojiro said dumbly.

"The poozer is saying that she can beat us up legally," Lu told her companion.

"Wait, wouldn't that . . . Ugh! I hate regulations! They're so stupid and totally un-yummy. Let's just leave the new girl and do something perky," Kojiro said after rubbing his head in pain.

"Yeah, this new girl was getting boring anyway," Lu said as she dropped said girl to the ground. "Let's go, Kojiro."

"Coming!" the boy cheered before running out after Lu.

As soon as the two were gone, Hikari rushed over to the side of the girl they had been trying to beat up. "Easy there, I've got you."

"I've been here for months," the girl said in a daze as Hikari lifted her back onto her feet.

"I know, Mayumi," Hikari said as they walked towards the door.

"Why doesn't anyone remember me?" the girl asked.

"Let's get you to the infirmary for a check up," Hikari told her as they walked through the door.

SOESOE

" _Well, that was depressing,"_ Khaji-Da grumbled as Hikari exited the infirmary.

"She's had a rough time at this school, but I'm confident she'll work things out," the class rep replied morosely.

" _You know this school better than me, but . . ."_

"But what?"

" _But shouldn't we go after the bullies?"_

"I've made a formal complaint to the staff, and I've informed Lu and Miki's class representative. We'll just have to wait for the system to work for now."

" _If the system worked, we wouldn't need superheroes."_

Hikari didn't answer.

SOESOE

Across town at that very moment, a limousine bearing the Bialyan flag was pulling up outside the Tokyo-3 Lexor Inn Suites. Out of the limo stepped a diplomatic envoy and his bodyguards. Ambassador Idris Mukhtar had arrived.

The ambassador and his entourage entered the hotel as if there was nothing wrong, as if it was just another building in Bialya. It wasn't, of course. It was a building owned by Lex Luthor, and they were there to meet with representatives of Intergang. The hotel had been chosen as the meeting point because it was considered neutral ground. Luthor had had dealings with both their organizations in the past, and neither of them wanted to get on his bad side.

The ambassador and his guard detail checked in and began the trip to the hotel room.

 _One night_ , Idris thought to himself. _Maybe two, and then I'll be out of this degenerate hole of scum and capes._

SOESOE

" _Oh boy! Our first stakeout,"_ Khaji-Da chirped happily as Hikari packed the last of her snacks into the Beetle Bag, a high capacity storage device developed by Kord Industries. It was light, it was portable, it could be carried using a variety of methods, and it helped create a unified theme for their identity. It was a backpack with a beetle on it, in other words.

"Relax, Khaji. We're probably just going to be sitting on a rooftop doing homework all night while bureaucrats blab in our ears about trade deals," the class rep assured her. "I mean, what are the chances that Mr. Kord is right and the Bialyan ambassador is up to no good, and on the first night he's here even?"

"Pretty good, I'd say," Kodama told her as she walked up behind her. "You have everything you need, sis?"

"Yeah, and don't you worry. Dinner's in the fridge," Hikari replied as she closed the bag and picked it up. "I'll be back sometime tonight. Possibly early tomorrow morning. Either way, you won't see me until morning."

"You know," Kodama said with a hand on Hikari's shoulder, "Nozomi idolizes you. There are times she simply won't be quiet about her big sister the superheroine. Not in public, mind you, but enough around the house."

Hikari turned around to face her sister with a serious look in her eyes before slinging the Beetle Bag over her shoulders to rest on her gut. "Then it's good she's on a field trip right now."

And just like that, Hikari was out the door.

SOESOE

"This the place?" Hikari asked as they flew near one of the many skyscrapers under construction in Tokyo-3.

" _From the satellite feed I was able to get from Mr. Kord, I'd say it's a fair bet that we'll be able to oversee the hotel room where the ambassador is staying,"_ Khaji reported professionally.

"Good," Hikari replied before they banked towards one of the incomplete levels that was on the same Z-axis as the hotel and flew through one of the glassless windows.

As they slowly flew through the bare and undecorated plywood, concrete, and plaster hallways, Hikari kept her head on a swivel, and Khaji-Da had all of the suit's passive sensors running. The last thing this operation needed was them being discovered. It would raise far too many questions, especially with the gear they were carrying.

It didn't take long to find the perfect spot, however: a half-constructed room that was almost completely covered with a window facing the hotel. The window was covered by a tarp, but that was easily worked around.

As soon as the girl/armor duo set down, Hikari took the pack off her shoulders before setting it down near the wall. She opened the top of it and removed an insulating blanket, then Khaji-Da produced a two-pronged cable on the suit's arm. The young girl took the end of the cable, unwound it, and reached over to clip it to the windowsill, briefly moving aside part of the tarp covering the window as she did so. That done, she wrapped the blanket around everything but the cable and started on the homework she had brought with her.

In the corner of her vision, an image of a conference room appeared, and just below that was an audioscope readout and transcript of what was being said inside the room. The hotel had been built to be comfortable and sealed against Kryptonian spying, a classic LexCorp design choice, but they had neglected to make preparations against more mundane forms of surveillance, another classic LexCorp design choice. It was for that reason that the powered pair were able to use a video microphone to listen in on everything being said by the people inside the soundproofed room by aiming at a picture hanging on the wall.

" _Think this meeting will work out or not? I say not."_

" _I don't know, man, and I don't care. We're just hotel security. We sweep the room for bugs, and then we're gone. The meeting could end with an Angel attack, and I wouldn't care as long the hotel wasn't squashed. I need this job, man."_

" _There's that word again . . ."_ Khaji-Da muttered.

Hikari just flinched at the double auditory signals and went back to working on her homework. It was a classic Ms. Asaji assignment, having the class calculate the gravitational effects of Io on Europa. At certain points during the assignment, Khaji would put in helpful advice, never giving the answer but assisting when the class rep's mind was stuck on a particularly nasty equation.

" _You know, it's pretty rare that children your age study these sorts of things,"_ Khaji commented.

" _Really? I thought kids on other planets would be learning this sort of stuff all the time,"_ Hikari mused aloud.

" _No. I mean, things might have changed in the however many years I've been on Earth, but I remember children your age learning about far simpler things, like algebra and geometry. Specialization means that not every person needs to be a super-scientist, and automation means that many tasks can be done with the press of a button. Also, while there are some 'genius' species out there, the vast majority of them aren't much different from humans,"_ Khaji expounded. _"All of that to say that your teacher is totally whack, yo!"_

"Nonsense. She's preparing us for the future," Hikari replied dramatically. "And that's not brainwashing either. The stuff I've learned from her has actually helped me in the field."

" _Well, hopefully those lessons can apply here, because our guest just arrived,"_ Khaji said, bringing Hikari's attention back to the picture-in-picture of the conference room.

A man she recognized as the Bialyan ambassador to Japan walked in and was soon followed by five other men; all were wearing simple black business suits and sunglasses, and only the ambassador and one other didn't have black hair. The ambassador sat down on one side of the table in the middle of the room, and the brown-haired man in a suit sat down opposite. The rest, who were presumably bodyguards, took up positions above and behind them, two each.

" _So what can Intergang do for you, Ambassador?"_

In the span of less than a second, so much blood had drained from Hikari's face that she looked like a corpse. _Oh, no . . ._

" _Hikari, what's wrong? Your vitals are dropping like crazy!"_ Khaji-Da exclaimed.

"Khaji," Hikari began, her mouth suddenly very dry. "Intergang is the biggest organized crime syndicate in the world. I think we might be in over our heads."

" _Hikari, what's wrong? You took on space pirates and their robot army just a few days ago, and now you think that a_ _street gang_ _is too much to handle?!"_ Khaji inquired, shock evident in her voice.

"Last year, one of the tenants in our apartment block took out a loan from Intergang. He couldn't pay them back in time, I guess, because it wasn't long before his body was found out back, the flesh had been stripped from his arms."

" _Frak me,"_ Khaji cursed. _"And you saw it, didn't you?"_

Hikari nodded. "Kodama tried to stop me from seeing, but I caught a glimpse, and something like that . . . I couldn't sleep right for weeks. I was terrified, and I wanted so badly to feel safe again, so I went digging through the news."

" _What did you find?"_ Khaji-Da asked.

"That it had been ruled a suicide by the police, and that it was neither the first time nor the last time that it had happened. I found out that Intergang ruled this city, and that they could get away with just about anything within its borders."

" _Not anymore,"_ Khaji-Da said with finality. _"Hikari, when you accepted Mr. Kord's offer, you said that you were tired of being pushed around. You said that you were tired of being a victim, of being nothing more than a bystander to all the horrors of the world. Well, now you have the power to do good, and Intergang's losing its power to do evil._

" _I'm not blind or deaf. I've seen the news, seen how Supergirl and Batgirl and Wonder Woman have been taking bigger and bigger chunks out of Intergang with each passing week, seen the Tokyo-3 Police Department finally start to root out corruption, and seen for the people of Earth start to live again after what I hear was a very long time. Intergang is on the ropes; that's why they're dealing with the Biyalans. Now, we have a chance to put another nail in their coffin. I have to ask you, though, can you do it?"_

Hikari was silent for a moment, the only sound being the audio of the opposite room, but when she answered, her voice was firm. "Yeah, I can. After a speech like that, how could I not?"

Khaji-Da's immaterial smile could be felt in her voice as she answered. _"I've seen it before, but that's in the past. Right now, the bad guys are about to get to the juicy part."_

" _What I need to know is if your organization can supply the goods, and if they can do so in a clandestine manner,"_ the ambassador said calmly.

" _Of course, Ambassador. The phased graviton pulse gun is an advanced prototype weapon, but luckily, we've been able to secure several examples and a location some distance away to test them at,"_ the Intergang representative replied cockily.

" _Where?"_

" _At a lumber yard to the west of here in a region called Aokigahara."_

"Noooooope!" Hikari said dramatically.

" _Oh, not this again!"_ Khaji lamented.

" _And you can guarantee the secrecy of this spot?"_

" _Absolutely. The whole area kills off sound like we kill off people, and since we bought the lumber yard, we have four days to do whatever we need to there before the new crew comes in."_

" _Let's just get this done tomorrow."_

" _Hey, the customer is always right. Say, three thirty tomorrow?"_

SOESOE

As soon as the bell rang at the end of school the next day, Hikari leapt to her feet in front of the class.

"Stand! Bow! Dismissed!"

She was out the door before many of the class had even finished her orders. The class rep did not have much time, and she could not spare any distractions. She had to be as swift as the wind out the door.

"Class Representative Horaki, a moment, if you will," a voice called out behind her in a tone of Japanese that strangely sounded Bostonian.

The twin-tail wearing girl grit her teeth and quickly put on a fake smile before turning around. "Why Class Representative Park, to what do I owe this audience?"

Jeong Park was a short boy, shorter even than Hikari despite being several months her senior, with an appearance that reminded Hikari far too much of a young Kim Jong-un. He also happened to be the class representative of the same class as Lu and Miki, winning his election thanks to what Hikari was sure was a bribery and intimidation campaign. It was for that reason that she preferred to deal with him via couriers, public statements, and whatever layers of separation she could fit between them outside of the Student Diet where they were forced into the same room along with all the other representatives.

"Your busy bodying is what you owe it to," Jeong said hotly. "You punished two kids from my class, and that is overstepping your bounds. Don't do it again!"

" _Punch him in the face!"_ Khaji-Da cheered in the class rep's head.

Hikari's grin became slightly more sadistic as she digested her fellow school politician's words. "Oh, but I didn't punish them, and I didn't overstep my bounds. If you'd read regulation 14:31:19/T of the student handbook, you'd see that I was acting fully within the limits of the law, and maybe if you'd discipline those students of yours better it never would have come to that. Because, when your classmates try to attack my classmate? Then it becomes my business."

"Hey, you listen here . . ."

"No, you listen," Hikari retorted. "I have a very important meeting to get to that I can't be late for. I'm going to go there, and you're going to do your job."

At that the class representative of Class 2-A spun around and power walked out the door, leaving her opponent to fume in the decreasingly crowded hall.

"Miki, Lu," Jeong ground out.

As if by magic the two bullies appeared behind him, both grinning grins that made it look like they had barely a brain cell between them.

"Yeah, boss?" Lu asked.

"Take care of her for me, but do it quietly," Jeong ordered them.

"You, like, want us to kill her? Isn't that totally, like, murder and stuff?" Miki asked confusedly.

Jeong's eyes widened and then he jumped up and slapped the ganguro boy across the face. "Idiot! Don't kill her! I mean make her lose her job! Yeesh, why in the world would you even think about that?!"

SOESOE

"They're going to try and kill me," Hikari said aloud as they flew through the air at transonic speeds towards Aokigahara.

" _And they're going to fail,"_ Khaji-Da reminded her. _". . . Transmission incoming."_

" _Hikari! Glad I caught you in time,"_ the voice of Ted Kord said over the radio. _"I've located the lumber yard where the deal is taking place. As it turns out, there's only one lumber yard in the region, so it wasn't that hard. However, the source of Intergang's supply of phased graviton pulse guns remains a mystery."_

"We'll find them eventually," Hikari said resolutely, even if she was more than a bit nervous about it all. "I have a bad feeling about this."

" _Now, let's not start that again,"_ Khaji reprimanded her.

" _Cut the chatter - heh, always wanted to say that - the target area is in view, and it looks like several vehicles are pulling in now."_

"Right! It's time to rock and roll!"

SOESOE

A trio of mind-bogglingly generic vehicles with tinted windows pulled into the deserted lumber yard without a fuss and parked with equal levels of normalcy. Out of the lead vehicle stepped the Intergang rep from the previous night and his team, out of the chase vehicle stepped Ambassador Idris Mukhtar and his security detail, and out of the van stepped a pair of Intergang thugs with very big guns.

As they unpacked their gear, Idris looked around the area with a fair bit of disdain. These Intergang fellows were far too arrogant, and it was going to get them all thrown in prison, at least temporarily on the part of Idris and his delegation. One of the ways his queen had gained the loyalty of her subjects so thoroughly was because of her demonstrated willingness to get them out of trouble. She was loyal to them, and they were loyal to her tenfold.

Intergang had none of that. They had repeatedly shown cruelty for the sake of cruelty and were all about as loyal as their fear and the next paycheck demanded. He had no doubts that officers among their number were routinely executed for a failure to perform to impossible standards, and that they were rewarded for brutal acts that inferred the organization's long term goals. They were, in other words, the world's largest street mob as far as Idris was concerned.

They were also providers of advanced technological breakthroughs in the field of weaponry. Thus, it was hard to ignore them.

"Alrighty, Ambassador," the Intergang rep began as he motioned one of the thugs holding the grav guns forward. "Feast your eyes on this."

The thug pulled the trigger, and a dull gray light shot out of the gun towards the log on top of a nearby stack. The beam connected, bathing the log in a gray field, and with a slight tug on the gun in the thug's hands, it rose into the air. The thug pressed a pair of buttons, and the log shot out at tremendous speed to collide with the thick forest line.

The Intergang rep had a supremely smug smirk on his face. "So, what do you think?"

There was a roar and then a huge explosion out in the yard. Out of the dust stepped a small female figure dressed in an all-encompassing blue and black suit of powered armor with a definite beetle motif. She put her hands on her hips commandingly, and the helmet's faceplate sported a cocky grin.

"I think you need to reread your law books, because weapons smuggling is illegal in Japan."

"It's the Blue Beetle! Get her!"

As the Intergang thugs started to raise their weapons, Idris leaned over to speak into the ear of his security detail's leader. "I think it's best if we take our leave now."

SOESOE

The Blue Beetle leapt into the air, letting two logs pass under her to collide harmlessly with the rest of the forest. She was getting ready to open fire when she was suddenly hit by a plethora of kinetic energy blasts encapsulated by tiny metal pellets accelerated to more than twice the speed of sound. To defend herself, the Azure Adjudicator raised her arms and formed the mighty Beetle Shield.

"Keep firing! Keep her pinned down! Build that palisade!" the Intergang rep shouted over the din of battle.

The thugs with the gravity guns moved massive pieces of lumber and wood through the air to stick them into the ground with the force of a thousand men. As an impromptu forest sprung up around them, the thugs continued to lay down suppressive fire on the mighty Beetle Shield, alternating fire modes and shooters to conserve ammo. Eventually, though, the forest grew too thick, and their fire slackened, allowing the Blue Beetle to fly to a more advantageous position.

"Good thing the shield held," Hikari commented dryly as she tried to look for a way in.

" _The shield held? The suit's basic armor held! We're bulletproof, Hikari! We can take these guys!"_ Khaji-da shouted.

"Khaji, I'll focus on keeping us alive. You just get us a firing solution on them with the stun missiles. Let's take them out in one shot!" and with that, the Blue Beetle flew into position above the palisade forest.

In the blink of an eye, the situation changed, and one of the fallen trees came rocketing up toward her. She tried to dodge, but the log exploded into a cloud of sharpened fragments that accelerated towards her at hurricane speeds. There wasn't enough time to dodge. There wasn't enough time to raise her shield. The Blue Beetle could only hover there and take it.

And take it she did, because every single piece of wooden shrapnel bounced off her powered armor coated skin like a 2cm KwK-30 round against the upper glacis of a T-34. She was alive, and very much . . .

"HehehehehehehHahahahaBWAHAHAHA!" Hikari laughed hysterically, her voice projected over the area by automatically triggered speakers. "You thought that would hurt?! I thought that would hurt!"

Two four-shot missile pods deployed from the sides of her forearms.

"Let's see if this hurts."

A salvo of eight missiles launched from the pods, covering the space between them and their targets in the space of a second. Each of them came down on their targets like a ton of bricks, knocking them out instantly. Less than two minutes after the Blue Beetle arrived on the scene, the fight was over.

" _Uh, Hikari, are you OK?"_ Ted and Khaji asked at the same time as the Blue Beetle descended to the ground.

"Fine. Never better," the young girl said with a dark chuckle, coming to a stop just above the ground and floating over to one of the fallen Intergang members.

"Hikari, you better not be thinking about doing what I think you're thinking about doing!" Ted shouted in the class rep's ear as she slowly hovered near one of the thugs.

". . . No. I don't plan on doing anything but calling the police," Hikari said finally after a long moment of silence. "I used to be so afraid of them, but now I'm beyond them. They can't hurt me or anyone close to me any . . . where's the third car?"

The Blue Beetle suddenly burst into motion and flew around the parking lot.

"Where's the tracks? The Bialyan ambassador is gone! We need to find him!"

SOESOE

Idris adjusted the holographic emitter in the backseat and turned it on with a loud click. A flashing "please wait" sign appeared, and before long, a regal woman in lilac-colored finery appeared in miniature. The ambassador bowed as best he could in the back seat of the vehicle.

"Ambassador Mukhtar, I fear you do not bring me good news," Queen Bee of Bialya said evenly.

"No, my queen," Idris said regretfully. "The deal with Intergang was interrupted by the new Blue Beetle."

The queen's face grew darker at the mention of that name. "So it seems that the protege of Garrett has finally acquired a protege of his own that has seen fit to continue their meddling legacy. Or perhaps she was after Intergang instead."

"She seemed particularly focused on Intergang, and we were able to use the car's anti-gravity wheels and cloaking device to get away unnoticed," Idris reported.

"Hmm, perhaps it was just an unfortunate coincidence. Still, be alert and tell our spies in Japan to focus on information gathering in regards to the new Blue Beetle and whatever teenaged girl is hiding behind that mask. Make sure to remind them not to reveal themselves to this new player, though. The deal with Intergang might have fallen through, but maybe we can salvage something from this," the Queen ordered.

"Well, that's not exactly true," Idris admitted before reaching across the seat and bringing one of the phased graviton pulse guns into view. "After all, Intergang never locked their van up."

A smile blossomed on the Queen's face. "HA! Good show, Idris! It seems that this day has gone better than expected."

SOESOE

" _I can't believe the old science teacher got retroviral hyperplasia,"_ Khaji-Da said sadly the very next day. _"I mean, I know there's a cure for that, but being bitten by that many spiders can't be fun."_

"I guess that's why he decided to retire. I'm more concerned that we somehow missed the Jet Alone going haywire and Miss Marvel's debut while we were getting those thugs processed," Hikari commented just before the door started to open. "Stand! Bow! Sit!" she called out on autopilot.

"Greetings and salutations, eager young space cadets!" a familiar male voice said in oddly accented Japanese.

Hikari's eyes widened as horrified and confused recognition dawned as to the identity of the brown-haired man in a lab coat even as he wrote his name on the blackboard.

"My name is Ted Kord, and I'll be your science teacher from here on out," Ted said after spinning around to face the class. "Yes, that Ted Kord, CEO of K.O.R.D. Inc., one of the biggest technology firms in the world. I'm eccentric, so I can get away with these sorts of things. Waffles?"

Hikari just stared at her mentor in mortified confusion. Most of the class was just confused at the sight of a CEO offering fresh waffles in their classroom. Rei raised her hand.

"I like your attitude, and you're going to need it, because the future is now, thanks to SCIENCE!"

SOESOE

A/N: Life is hard, and sometimes the simplist of things can trip you up in writing. In this case it was that bloody fight scene. Hikari just isn't a street-level hero. She's meant to be flying around in space, taking on the scum of the universe while "No Guts, No Glory" by Vito Gesualdi plays in the background. That is, of course, impossible in a text based medium but we'll see what comes of things when we get around to it. The next story to update will almost certainly be the start of _Atomic Exposure_.

I have much more immediate news though! All four of the current _Superwomen of Eva: Legacies_ stories now have TV Tropes pages. Be sure to check them out, and thank you for all those who add content ahead of time.


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